As a child, choosing a Christmas tree was as much expedition as event. No trips to the local tree lot. No tree farms for hot chocolate and sleigh rides.  One day each year we’d pack enough supplies for Peary’s run to the Pole and set off for Battle Ridge up Bridger Canyon. Hours later, cold, with runny noses and shining eyes we’d return triumphantly with that year’s perfect tree.

In ‘65 Dad brought home a snowmobile. A Johnson Skee Horse, unaerodynamic and weighing like a small tractor, we dubbed it The Beast. Seafoam green with orange seats and a pull rope for a starter, we’d tear around the pasture on The Beast at the dizzying speed of fifteen miles per hour!  My traumatized mother believed we were going to break our necks at any moment.

That year, the tree hunt was just Dad and me. Wrestling The Beast over the top of a snowbank into the bed of our truck we set off one morning for Battle Ridge. Once there we set out on The Beast towing a toboggan. Sailing like the wind (well, maybe a light breeze) over the snowdrifts, we stopped occasionally to discuss the merits of assorted conifers. All were rejected for various reasons, and we continued on.  

Then we saw The Tree. Regal, It’s perfect cone shape of forest green needles silvering lightly on their lower sides, The Tree called to us, “Here I am! Take me home.”

Dad shut off The Beast. In sudden stillness the odors of gasoline and overheated fiberglass dissipated. We looked at each other and grinned.  We circled The Tree. No flat sides were seen. No bare spots were discernible. Dad, holding out his thumb, an artist getting perspective, declared The Tree within the twelve foot limit. I ran to retrieve axe and saw and we set to work toppling The Tree.

The first hint that trouble lay ahead should have been the discovery that The Tree had twin trunks, each the size of my thigh. Focused on our trophy, blinded to this detail, we simply dug in the snow to find where the two trunks became one. We dug deeper. Then deeper still. With the pit at nearly three feet, we widened it to allow the swing of the axe. Two lumberjacks, we hacked a while, then sawed a while, alternating labors, until at last the trunk was severed. This was the point at which the second flaw in our endeavor should have been obvious. The Tree would not fall, supported as it was by the wall of snow surrounding it.

Undeterred, Dad stood in the hole and lifted while I pulled from above. Several attempts raised The Tree from its snowy tomb. We toppled The Tree onto the toboggan, a six foot brute of steam bent maple that promptly collapsed into the snow under the weight of The Tree. Self evident flaw number three was solved by lashing the toboggan on top of The Tree before attaching the whole bundle to the rear of The Beast with a tow rope.

One cardinal rule of Christmas tree sorties is that you must get stuck at least once on the trip. However, I’m sure this rule is supposed to apply only to wheeled vehicles.  

The Beast was stuck in the first ten feet of the return trip. Seventy five horsepower engine straining and shaking; twenty inch track churning like Mom churned butter, the whole rear end of The Beast buried itself. Digging The Beast out of the snow became a recurrent theme for the next hour or more. It struggled to pull the weight of two passengers and The Tree. Sane men would have quit, resigned to a less burdensome prize. We were not sane. We had taken a trophy tree and no amount of sensibility could have deterred us. I’ve often wondered since, if it is this sort of single mindedness that leads to alcoholism or juvenile delinquency.

Dad and I exhausted from digging and pushing, and The Beast exhausted from pulling, collapsed at the truck, overheated and winded. Hot chocolate for me, and Canadian Club for Dad allowed recovery to wrestle both The Beast and The Tree into the truck bed. It’s leaf springs groaning and complaining all the way we set out for home.

Roman Centurions returning from battle, we rolled triumphantly into the drive of our farmhouse. Heaving The Tree to the ground, we leaned it against, (or should I say over), the roof of the front porch. Excitedly, I ran into the house to fetch Mom, Mom gasped with what we believed appropriate awe. That thought was dashed when she rolled her eyes, shook her head and exclaimed, “What on earth were you two thinking? That thing is huge! You’ll never get it into the house!”

Defensively pulling out a tape measure, Dad replied, “It’s not huge, it’s just full!” Dad stretched out the tape and began to measure (since women have no eye for that sort of thing). He and I were shocked to discover The Tree had actually grown on the trip home! Fully sixteen feet long (please don’t tell the Forest Service, I have no idea of their statute of limitations), it was ten feet in diameter at the base branches!  

Shamefaced, Dad uttered those famous last words, “Don’t worry it will fit into the house.” Mom only rolled her eyes again and left Dad and me with an engineering dilemma.

Length was not the issue. A saw would halve The Tree nicely. Girth would not be an encumbrance. The farmhouse living room was large enough to hold square dances in. No, the problem was how to get ten feet of branches through a three foot doorway.  

Still, never say never to a couple of Montana tree hunters!

Dad concluded the ninety degree corner in the front hall was unnavigable even if The Tree could be forced through the doorway. He considered removing the picture window in the east wall of the living room but concluded that limited carpentry skills made that option impractical. His decision was that a combination of brute strength and careful bending just might make the path from the back door, through the laundry room, the kitchen and dining room then to the living room, workable.  

After moving anything portable or fragile from our intended route, Dad and I forced The Tree butt first through the back doorway then into the laundry. The snapping and popping sounds of branches were worrisome, but we were committed and continued.

Bending The Tree we negotiated it into the kitchen sufficiently far to lay over the counters and rotated it to point to the dining room. A hard push worked! Springing through the opening like a rabbit fleeing the clutches of a snake, The Tree practically flung itself unaided to the center of the living room, nothing damaged (if you didn’t count the path of scraped paint and gouged sheetrock in our wake).  

Massive pieces of lumber nailed to the trunk base and supportive guy wires strung to lag hooks screwed into ceiling joists were all that were required to raise The Tree in all its glory, top cut so it brushed flush to the ceiling. Eiffel himself could not have raised so grand an edifice as was The Tree.

Owenhouse Hardware had their best Christmas sales season ever that year. Three generations of bulbs and garlands and lights were not enough for the massive surface of The Tree. I know at least two trips to town were made to purchase sufficient Christmas finery for that beauty. Even Mom agreed, once the house was in order and The Tree lit up the living room with the splendor of the Las Vegas Strip, that it had been worth the effort.

The Beast was retired not too many winters after that, worn out I’m sure from the epic struggle out of Battle Ridge. I don’t know what happened to the three miles or so of  Christmas lights we bought that year, though to this day I still have some of the ornaments. Never again was there another tree like The Tree. It remains the stuff of legend in our family; a yarn spun in Christmas season as the hunt begins for that year’s perfect tree.

This year again will find me up Battle Ridge hunting a tree. A wiser and more experienced man than I was at eleven, I will take my wife Rose with me. We’ll get stuck in the rig. We’ll laugh and throw snowballs and drink hot chocolate while discussing the merits of various conifers. We’ll find the year’s perfect tree. One thing will be different though from that Christmas of ‘65. No matter how magnificent a trophy, if Rose looks at it and rolls her eyes, I’ll move on!